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Level 4

1,349 points

Does iTunes and/or Apple TV phone home during home sharing?

I share the problem of home sharing disconnecting during play from a host Mac to an Apple TV client. A movie or music or a podcast plays for 5 or 10 or 15 minutes, then stops. The Apple TV then can't see the host Mac until home sharing there is restarted, or until iTunes on the host Mac is restarted, or until the host Mac reboots, or until the Apple TV is restarted. After one or more of those steps, home sharing works but may well fail again after a few minutes.

I've tried to read all of the many, many threads about this. Contributors offer some solutions -- use wired connections only, use wireless only, update software, revert software, open some other connection to Apple, close all other internet activity, and so on. My own experience is that some of the solutions appear to work in the short term, but none of them works in the long term. I also have enough equipment to do some interesting troubleshooting. I see the problem on multiple computers of different generations and different OS versions, and on ATV units running both the original iOS version and the current update. Wired, wireless, Apple router, third-party router, etc.

When the problem of connect -- play -- fail -- restart something - connect -- fail -- etc starts, other services like file sharing work fine. In particular, I can Airplay from a host Mac to the ATVs all day. It's homesharing that acts differently.

Since turning on homesharing requires a sign in and the dropped home sharing connections occur after fairly regular intervals, I wonder if home sharing phones home (every five minutes or so?) to reauthorize the connection? Does anyone know for sure?

My internet service is slow. Theory: Reauthorization times out because it's tuned to the fast internet service that many -- but not all -- users have.

Other people with this problem, would you call your internet service excellent / some problems / slow or poor?

John

mini (2010) Server 4GB/1TB RAID 0, Mac OS X (10.6.8)

Posted on Aug 13, 2012 8:35 AM

29 replies

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 19, 2012 8:41 AM in response to Winston Churchill

The point they seem to be making as far as i can see is that the problem starts when this max is reached, but that with the number of devices they have they can't see how it has maxed out.

In many cases it does seem to point to iTunes not responding for some reason.

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 19, 2012 8:43 AM in response to Alley_Cat

I'm going to swap the powerline adapters back to as they were to see if that helps.

The new ones have an energy saving mode but supposedly that only kicks in when devices are powered down.

They are not connected to the AppleTV currently.

akimsset

Level 1

4 points

Aug 19, 2012 12:09 PM in response to Alley_Cat

Some more details

ATV3 has worked just fine for me (Very slow starting when showin pictures. Have 5000)

I got BIG trouble with WiFi connection to my iPad 1 iPad 3 and iPhone 4S

Here on the forum I got hundreds of tips.

Change security from WEP to WAP2 Personal seems to work. At least for two hours now.

All my devices now connected fine.

When I logged in to ATV3 it was OK. Found the network.

The first screen says "Home sharing is on with the account ....., click computers to access."

Next screen says: "You must turn your homesharing on"

I have restarted a couple of times with the wallcord without success

I have upgraded to Mountain Lion wich I wisch i had not.

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 19, 2012 12:31 PM in response to akimsset

Thanks for info.

I've been using WPA2 for quite some time on my current and older router - you're wise to ditch WEP as it is not very secure in this day and age and can easily be intercepted. Unlilely but you never know if there's a malicious/curious geek nearby.

I don't think it's a Mountain Lion problem as I've seen my particular issue with Snow Leopard, Lion and Mountain Lion (I have a multi boot system currently with both SL and ML).

I actually really like Mountain Lion having stuck with Snow Leopard for quite some time. What issues are you having?

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 19, 2012 12:32 PM in response to Alley_Cat

Alley_Cat wrote:

I'm going to swap the powerline adapters back to as they were to see if that helps.

The new ones have an energy saving mode but supposedly that only kicks in when devices are powered down.

They are not connected to the AppleTV currently.

AC

Ok it's not the powerline adpaters as far as I can see - replaced the older slower ones and after playing a movie from itunes AppleTV3 has now lost both libraries it listed 90 minutes before.

Really baffled by this.

John Child Author

Level 4

1,349 points

Aug 20, 2012 12:44 AM in response to John Child

I can add some more information to my original post now that I have watched network traffic more carefully.

iTunes signs in with Apple to initiate home sharing. ATV does too. There's no sign of iTunes reauthorizing or otherwise phoning home.

But iTunes and ATV do chat with each other, on intervals of about one-minute during homesharing video play -- exchanging packets of a few hundred bytes that look like "Are you there?" "Yes, I am." This is true even after iTunes has streamed the entire video and the ATV has cached it (so that there is no other traffic between the two devices).

When home sharing fails, these packets stop.

Theory one: local network error breaks the conversation, and without ACK from the other side the ATV declares the connection failed, stops playing, and loses the home sharing connection with iTunes.

Theory two: it's an ATV or iTunes error; the cut-off of network traffic is just a symptom, not a cause.

Thanks for your intelligent responses so far!

John

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 20, 2012 1:53 AM in response to John Child

Two threads you might want to take a look at:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3844788?answerId=18560614022#18560614022

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3948888?start=0&tstart=0

What are you using to monitor the packets ?

John Child Author

Level 4

1,349 points

Aug 20, 2012 4:29 AM in response to Alley_Cat

Interesting threads. Thanks. Did the Ruby code to auto-restart iTunes work for you to mitigate the problem? Perhaps not if you are still looking for a solution...

My monitoring is on the mac end of the connection (a Mini and an Air) using Little Snitch with "Show local network activity" turned on.

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 20, 2012 5:00 AM in response to John Child

To be honest I've not tried it yet as I've only just rediscovered the threads.

Alley_Cat

Level 7

20,548 points

Aug 20, 2012 5:02 AM in response to Alley_Cat

I've not used Little Snitch for some time but may take a look again.

John Child Author

Level 4

1,349 points

Aug 20, 2012 5:28 AM in response to John Child

The Ruby script didn't do anything when home sharing playback stopped for me. It did trigger (and restart iTunes) when I quit iTunes manually. It appears to monitor that port correctly, but it didn't notice that home sharing had failed.

John

John Child Author

Level 4

1,349 points

Aug 25, 2012 5:23 AM in response to John Child

Follow up and, perhaps, closure to my issue. Wiring computers and ATVs rather than using wifi makes everything work exactly as advertised -- three full days now with no problems. ATV and iTunes connections stay up overnight; video and audio plays perfectly without disconnections.

Wiring just a computer or just an ATV did not solve my problem.

Wifi appears to be the problem, for me at least. I use a Digicomm DSL modem, router, wifi router box. It's cheap. It's also not an 802.11n router.

Possibilities

+ The cheap router isn't doing wifi "right" in some way. The stayalive packets that go between iTunes and ATV every minute or so are being corrupted or lost. (But posters of some of the home sharing trouble reports that sound just like my problem say they are using Apple routers.)

+ The stayalive traffic has short timeouts and/or limited re-try packets -- it assumes an excellent, fast (802.11n?) network. (People reporting problems who have Apple routers may have older equipment that don't do "n" standard.)

+ Interference on wifi from cordless phones, microwaves, etc.

Those things can combine, of course. Interference and limited re-tries, for example, could be the answer.

Any thoughts? I'll submit this as feedback but would like to have as complete and correct a report as possible.

John

John Child Author

Level 4

1,349 points

Aug 25, 2012 9:14 PM in response to John Child

Thanks to Alley_Cat and Winston Churchill

Sep 18, 2012 8:42 AM in response to John Child

sorry to say this, but not necessarily a fix.

I have my ATV 2nd & 3rd gen wired to my time capsule, and my Mac Mini wired to that too.

My library is located on one of my Time capsules (all TC are hard wired with the network roaming option).

Still if decided to watch a movie on any ATV/iPad/iPhone or even my MacBook Pro, i get the spinning wheel running forever "loading my iTunes library" and nothing is happening!!!

To get this to work, i will have to login to my Mac Mini and quit and restart iTunes (which is clearly is not a solution, at least not a proper Apple solution.

I guess both theories of hardwiring and changing wireless router are a complete mith!!

Does iTunes and/or Apple TV phone home during home sharing?